Get ready for the showers (and hopefully, no water-logging all over the city)

The magic of winter is fading, the summer spins have started showing up… The rain trees have lost their canopies to the winter fall and city gets deprived of their caring shadows for some time…

City has already succumbed to cold wave; many say that this winter is colder than the earlier few. Early morning at a signal nearby I spot few enjoying the fire warming up a bit….

This is something that I have noticed, felt, realized every time I pass this stretch. I feel this phenomenon is more evident for those of us on a two wheeler. May be a few of the four wheel users also must have felt it. And I am sure there are many such stretches around here in Bangalore. But since I travel regularly that way I am able to point out only this.

In the evenings, when I get onto Kasturba Road from the Hudson Circle, I feel the air around there becoming cooler compared to how it was say at Hudson Circle. It pretty much stays that way all the way up to Vittal Malya Road-Kasturba Road junction & is back to normal once you cross the signal & head towards MG Road.

My only guess for this is the vast number of trees in Cubbon Park that adjoins Kasturba Road. It’s a nice experience really especially now that is summer time here. In the winter it gets much cooler on this stretch compared to how it is elsewhere.

If it is the trees then just imagine what an impact these trees make to the city’s weather conditions. And its general knowledge that the tree cover in the city is on the decline.

Perhaps this adds one more reason for my liking towards Bangalore, the city gets rains in the midst of summer…while rest of the country fights it out with mercury chasing all time highs. This indeed is a solace….

Been two weeks out of city and returning to get a great news that it rained cats and dogs was really pleasing… that to when I could enjoys some drizzles just same evening I returned to help me cool down a bit was too good to resist!!

Hey dear Bangalore, and howdy rains…I like you so much!!

Few parts of Bangalore witnessed heavy rains yesterday evening. It was pleasant to glimpse downpour after having experienced the effects of the fiery heat rays since sometime.

We were at airport road and witnessed hailstones as well.

Bangalore really needed some rainfall isn’t it?

Pleasant weather indeed!

Mercury levels have touched 35 deg Celsius, the summer heat makes it difficult to rest at home. Garden city comes to the rescue with huge parks / gardens for people to unwind and relax under the trees. Here is a reader relaxing in lalbagh on a backdrop of glass house….

This is the Airtel office on Bannerghatta Road, near the Jayadeva flyover. True to the “modern” trend in architecture, the facade of the building is all glass; but look at the effect on the inside.

Since one entire wall is glass, the afternoon/evening sun pours in through it.

This is all very well for cities in cold countries where sunshine is a rare commodity, and buildings need to be heated. But here, where the mercury yesterday was at 34 degrees Celsius, it meant a huge volume of space where things were very uncomfortable.

Here are the staff, who have to sit facing the hot and intense sunlight throughout the afternoon:

The customers also have to sit in the sun, but at least they have their backs to it..and they are there for far less time.

The Airtel office is air-conditioned; I can also guess at the amount of energy and electricity it must be taking to cool down the space heated by the glass design of the building.

The architect who designed Jal Bhavan (it’s the building in the dead centre of that map, next to that “pleated” building) has said that glass is a bad material for architecture in India; it heats up the inside of the buildings, which then have to be cooled down at enormous cost in terms of electricity/energy.

Having been in the Airtel office, I would tend to agree.

No this is neither a Photoshop effect nor sky from mars, it continued to rain since early evening y’day and while sunset the ambient light just spread it’s orange tinge all over the city. Indeed a rare and wonderful sight!!

Today is unique; as my friend put it, it is “Amar Akbar Anthony” or “Ram Rahim Robert” day. Holi, Milad-un-Nabi (the birthday of the Holy Prophet Muhammad, Peace Be Upon Him) and Good Friday are all being celebrated today.

It is probably simplistic and idealistic to wish, as someone I know did, that each community feeds sweets to the others; but I do think that’s such a nice thing to wish for, anyway!

Having been born a Hindu, I have been privileged to be exposed to Christianity and Islam as well. We lived near two churches where I would visit very often; they were quiet citadels of peace where one could “recharge one’s battery” as it were. I would attend midnight Mass regularly during Christmas; the service on Palm Sunday, when everyone would walk out of the cathedral with candles in their hands, is still etched in my memory.

When I moved to this city, I lived within walking distance of two mosques, and learnt to understand the call of the muezzin to prayer; and realized that the words addressed to God mean much the same no matter what the religion. I also had a neighbour who was very knowledgeable about Islam and the Quran, and shared some of that with me. On Muslim festival days, I would get kheer (specially prepared for me as I was a vegetarian!) from her home, and I would send across “payasam” and “vadai” on Hindu festival days.

And since I grew up in the north of India, Holi was also something we celebrated though we hailed from the South. In fact, being in a land different from one’s own meant, to me, that one had more festivals than just one’s own, to celebrate!

So, for me, colours have a special meaning. Like the rainbow, I strongly believe that humanity comes in all colours of beliefs, and each of them is as valid as the other, provided each does not hurt anyone else. To me, the Festival of Colours is not just a Hindu festival, but a secular one, celebrating differences.

Today as I went about my shopping chores, I watched so many children drenched in many colours, dodging about happily; and I thought I would like to share, not the colours created by human beings, but the colours that Nature herself has created and shared with us.

Here is an image from Biligiri Ranganna Hills, about 4 hours’ drive from Bangalore:

The blue of the sky, the red of the new leaves, the greens of the older ones…Nature indulges Herself in colours, variety, and differences, too.

And Bangalore has also been experiencing the colour of green because of the rains:

The raindrops fall, and they dance at the tip of the palm fronds; they bring life to the trees and the plants of Bangalore, and bring a reminder that green is a colour that seems to be fast vanishing from our environs, and being replaced by the grey of concrete.

So as we celebrate one or more of the three festivals of today, let’s remember two things: One, to respect our differences…it takes seven colours to produce the beauty of a rainbow, and two, to protect the colour green in our city!